Wednesday, July 10, 2013

All D v Not All D (1989-90 to 2011-12) per 48

The charts below (click to enlarge) break out conventional offensive and defensive statistics for All Defensive players versus all other players by position category (i.e., PGs, wings, and post players) for every season from 1989-90 to 2011-12. The statistics are standardized on a per 48 minute performance, which gives some indicator as to how these groups would perform over an entire NBA game. (Although fatigue, injury, etc. would likely result in declining play--significantly for some players--as minutes played approached 48. Thus, this should be viewed as a rough estimate of full-game performance.)

The charts show that over 48 minutes, All Defensive players are better in virtually every offensive and defensive category than are non-All Defensive players. The exceptions are all All Defensive positional categories are slightly more likely to turn the ball over than their non-All Defensive counterparts (which makes sense as they are more likely to possess the ball), and that All Defensive wings average slightly fewer offensive rebounds than their non-All Defensive counterparts. The difference is most stark with post players, where All Defensive post men far outperform their non-All Defensive counterparts, whom over 48 minutes average almost six and a half fouls. These statistics simply present more evidence that All Defensive players are all-around superior players, which should not come as a surprise but may give reason to believe that offensive performance could influence NBA coaches' decision to vote a given player to the All Defense team.